


in case of love at first sight break glass

by StarlightDragon



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Office, Cliche, Love Confessions, Love at First Sight, M/M, Meet-Cute, Past Gabriel/Kali (Supernatural), Rain, Roses, completely unrealistic sap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-12
Updated: 2016-09-12
Packaged: 2018-08-14 16:43:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8021350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StarlightDragon/pseuds/StarlightDragon
Summary: There's a glass box in the lobby of the office Gabriel works in with a rose inside and the words 'In case of love at first sight, break glass.' But he's never going to use it, because he can't think of anything more stupid than the idea of love at first sight.





	in case of love at first sight break glass

**Author's Note:**

> hey look i finally managed to write something for the first time in 19572619467632 years
> 
> this is based on the time i got told i was too wet to come into walgreens
> 
> except it's actually mostly based on [this tumblr post right here](http://casandsip.tumblr.com/post/141075173916)

Gabriel Novak stopped believing in love at first sight when he was seven years, four months and twenty-three days old.

There was a new girl at his school. She was in the third grade, a year older than Gabriel, but he wasn't put off by this. He wasn't scared of anything or anyone - except his dad, but he wasn't here right now to be scared of, and at school, Gabriel was as fearless as they came. And the first time Gabriel ever laid eyes on her in the playground at lunch break, he knew. She was the one for him. 

He pointed towards her and turned to his best friend. "Balthazar, do you think she's pretty?"

Balthazar shrugged and pulled out a deck of Pokemon trading cards. "Who cares? Wanna see my Charizard?"

Gabriel was a little put out for a moment, but then he decided, "Good. I'm glad you don't like her, cause she's mine. I'm gonna marry her someday."

"Why?" Balthazar pulled a face, holding out the card.

"Cause I love her," Gabriel replied simply.

"You don't even know her."

This wasn't important to Gabriel. "So what? Anyway, I'll give you a Fearow if you say you'll be best man at my wedding."

Balthazar thought about that for a second, and then agreed. "Alright then. Do I have to wear a suit?"

"Yeah, but you can pick the color."

"Fine, I'll wear a bright orange suit. Gimme the card."

Gabriel dug the cards out of his pocket and rifled through his collection until he found the Fearow, sliding it on top of Balthazar's own deck. "There. Now pinky promise that you'll do it."

Balthazar did so, and then suggested, "You know, if you love her, you should go over there and talk to her."

Gabriel hadn't really thought about that before, but now that he did, it was actually quite a good idea of Balthazar's. "Yeah, maybe I will."

He took off across the playground at a jog. The girl was talking to a couple of her friends, but Gabriel wasn't put off. They were her friends, sure, but he was her future husband. He'd be first priority for sure.

He tapped her on the shoulder and she turned around, scowling, looking down at him. "What do you want?"

Gabriel held out the slightly squashed bag of marshmallows that he'd brought as a snack this morning. "Would you like a marshmallow?"

The girl wrinkled her nose and took a step back. "No. Why are you talking to me?"

"Cause I love you," Gabriel informed her. She might as well know sooner rather than later.

"Oh yeah? Well, you're a gross little second grader, and you need to stay away from me. And wipe your nose," she announced, giving him a shove before turning back to her friends with a flip of her long dark hair.

Gabriel stared after her, his eyes wide and forlorn. Just cause he was a second grader? That was a stupid reason not to like someone. His dad was lots older than his mum and nobody said anything about that. And Gabriel's nose really wasn't that bad. 

Balthazar came jogging over. "So, what happened?"

Gabriel stared at him with his eyes wide and then shook his head, feeling tears well up that he couldn't control. He sprinted off in the opposite direction, ducking into the gap between two school buildings and sliding down the wall, balling his hands up into fists and rubbing at his eyes. 

It was a couple of minutes before he heard somebody plop down on the ground next to him. For a moment he had a glimmer of hope that it might have been the girl, back to apologize, but when he opened his eyes, it was just Balthazar.

Balthazar held out the Charizard. "Here. You should have it."

And so Gabriel realized that it was stupid to fall for someone he didn't even know. Over the next few years, he got to know the girl a little better. He found out her name; Kali. At a middle school dance she asked him to dance with her, only to leave him stranded in the middle of the dancefloor mid-song when someone better looking asked her. At a high school party, the two of them were picked to play Seven Minutes in Heaven, and so they kissed, and she was a good kisser, but it quickly got annoying when Gabriel realized that she always had to be the one in control of the kiss, and wouldn't accept anything else. In college, the two of them woke up in bed together with terrible hangovers, and she got up and made herself coffee without offering him anything.

Despite everything, Gabriel liked her. But he definitely didn't want to marry her.

Which was why that he rolled his eyes and shook his head when he saw the wall decorations in the lobby of his new office. He was joining the creative team for a customized candy company, one of those places where you could write your own message on a slab of chocolate and surround it with any shaped truffles you wanted, or construct a cotton candy sculpture to display at a wedding. And with Valentines' Day coming up he'd figured the office would be unnecessarily cutesy. He'd planned on suffering through pink and white striped wallpaper and framed cartoon drawings of small animals in love.

But the thing he most definitely had not been prepared for was the bright red fire blanket type box mounted on the wall, in plain view of everyone who walked in there, containing a single red rose and stamped with the words 'IN CASE OF LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT, BREAK GLASS'.

Gabriel was already regretting taking the job. The free candy was not worth having to walk past something as dumb as that every day.

Each morning after that as Gabriel walked into work, he started coming up with more and more creative ways to avoid looking at that box. His hat collection grew about three times as large within his first week. The time it rained, he kept his umbrella down over his head until he reached his cubicle, shaking rain over several people who he passed. There was the day he brought coffee for everyone he worked with just so he could hold the tray up high and hide that box, and then came the first day it was cold enough to wear a coat with a giant fur lined hood.

He wasn't sure why it bothered him as much as it did. He knew it was a joke, knew that it probably wasn't even real and that the glass probably wasn't even smashable. If he tried to do what it said, he was sure he'd come away with nothing more than bruised knuckles and a burning embarrassment that someone might have seen him fuck up. But, still. Something about it got to him. Just the idea of doing something like that for somebody he didn't even know, when they could easily yell a rejection in his face and walk away, leaving Gabriel holding a red rose, surrounded by a pile of shattered glass. And for what? Someone who wouldn't even turn out to be worth it.

Valentine's Day came and went, and the box stayed.

"Are they ever going to take that down?" Gabriel remarked to one of his coworkers as they strolled through the lobby, on their way to go get lunch.

"It's been there for as long as I've worked here," Castiel replied, holding the front door open for Gabriel. "I believe they are waiting for somebody to use it."

"Pity the poor sucker who ends up doing it," Gabriel grumbled, happy to escape the stifling office and the feeling of the box's nonexistent eyes on him.

Gabriel didn't think he'd ever be able to forget about the box's existence, but as he grew more and more accustomed to working in the office, it faded from his mind. His eyes slid past it each morning as though it wasn't even there. He vaguely knew that it was, because he was sure that its getting taken down or being used would have caused a stir, but he'd managed to completely block its presence out of his life. He hardly ever thought about it, and he liked things so much better that way.

Until the day the storm hit.

It had been a perfectly sunny morning, and Gabriel had rolled up his sleeves on the walk to work, trying to catch some sun. The sky had been a clear, bright blue and the clouds white and fluffy, and there'd been no indication at all that anything was going to happen. And then, just as Gabriel was finishing up for the morning and planning to head out on his lunch break, the sky opened and a torrent of rain poured down, a sheet of water so thick that it was almost impossible to see through.

Gabriel changed his plans, because there was no way he was going outside in this. But he didn't have any food with him, so he decided instead to head down to the coffee shop on the first floor and see if he could grab a muffin there. He picked up his wallet, ran a hand through his hair and set off down the stairs at a jog. He reached the lobby and raced across the floor-

-and slipped in a puddle of water, his legs completely giving out, collapsing onto the hard wooden floor.

"You alright?" came a voice from above him.

Gabriel blinked and sat up, staring at the person who had just appeared. It was immediately obvious what Gabriel had just slipped on, because this guy was absolutely drenched, dripping water all over the floor. His long hair looked like it needed to be squeezed like a sponge, his white work shirt had gone see through and was clinging to the abs that Gabriel's eyes definitely didn't linger on for a moment, and he had tiny droplets of water clinging to his eyelashes and to the tip of his nose. He was holding out an equally wet hand to help Gabriel to his feet.

And Gabriel wanted to take it, he really did. The only problem was that he was too busy staring at the man.

It wasn't just that he was the most beautiful person Gabriel had ever seen in his life. That was true, but there was something else at the same time. He felt almost... familiar, somehow, like Gabriel had made plans to meet him here today but had forgotten until this precise moment. And he felt safe. Gabriel would have followed him anywhere, because he just knew that he would be okay, and that this man would protect him. Gabriel's heart was fluttering, he felt a little sick, a little nervous, and his head was spinning from more than just the sudden fall.

"Seriously. Do... do you need me to call an ambulance?"

"No," Gabriel shook his head, his voice sounding echoey and distracted. His mind was a long way away. It was back in the playground with Kali when he was seven. It was in his office sorting through all the orders from people who had created beautiful custom candy designs for the people that they loved. And it was back on his first day here, in this exact room, seeing the box with the flower in it for the first time.

Gabriel took the man's hand and felt lightning run down his arm as he got to his feet.. The flutter in his heart became a rapid pounding that he couldn't ignore. He looked up into the man's eyes and blinked, checking he was still there, not a figment of Gabriel's imagination. 

"Sorry about that," The man bit his lip and looked embarrassed. "I was out getting lunch when the rain started coming down. I ducked into the nearest building to dry off for a moment, hoping it would clear up."

Gabriel glanced out of the window, and saw that the guy was right. The rain had stopped now, the sun was shining, and a rainbow blazed across the sky. What had been the chances that the rain would happen right at that moment, just as he was passing this building? What were the chances that Gabriel would come down at the exact same moment and slip in the puddle of water?

Gabriel made a snap decision. He might only have one chance at this, and he wasn't going to let what had happened to him in the past stop him from seizing the moment.

"Wait there."

"Are you gonna get me a blanket or something? Cause I promise I don't need one, I just wanted five minutes out of the rain."

"Not a blanket, I'm getting something way more important. Please don't move. Please."

Gabriel ran towards the back of the room, eyes fixed on the flower in the box. He raised his fist and punched it through the glass. There was a loud crash, and the shards rained down on the floor, creating even more of a commotion than he'd expected.

Well, there was no going back now, that was for sure.

"What's going on?" came a voice from over Gabriel's shoulder. Right behind him. Definitely, definitely close enough to see the inscription inside the box.

Gabriel reached forward and plucked the flower from the box, then spun around, holding it out. He only had one shot at this.

"Hi. Okay. So I don't know anything about you, I don't even know your name. I just know that I saw you there standing above me like some kind of... angel, come to rescue me from the evil demon water or whatever."

That was a terrible start. No, he could do better than that. This might be the most important thing he'd ever done, he _had_ to do better than that.

"And something changed. It was like my perspective changed, like in that moment I stopped being cynical, and I believed in stuff that I haven't done for a long time. And maybe that's weird, and maybe I can't explain the reasons for it. But it happened, and I wanna follow that and see where it goes. I don't know you, but I want to get to know you. If you'd be okay with that. And I want you to have this flower because... because..." Gabriel shook his head and swallowed. "Well, you can see what it says."

The man didn't say anything for an impossibly long moment. Gabriel supposed he couldn't really blame him, but he wanted to yell, wanted to shake him and tell him to stop keeping him in suspense.

And finally...

"Sam."

"What?"

Sam grinned. "My name's Sam. So now you know one thing about me, aside from the fact that I never think to carry an umbrella. And... yeah, I'd like to get to know you better too. If only because anyone who would actually do something as ridiculous as all this-" Sam gestured to the broken glass on the floor- "has to be interesting enough to spend some time with."

He plucked the rose from Gabriel's hand and winked.

Gabriel let out a shaky breath. "Hi, Sam. Thanks for giving a weird, overdramatic guy like me a chance."

Sam raised an eyebrow and shrugged. "What can I say, I guess there's just something about you. Just like what it says in the box. Unless... do you do this for every guy who walks through here?"

Gabriel's eyes widened and he shook his head, grabbing Sam's hand. "No!It's been here for years. Never been used before, not by me, not be anyone. Guess nobody had a moment that was special enough, until now."

"Until now when you fell for me?" Sam confirmed.

Gabriel groaned. "I'll take the rose back if you keep making jokes like that."

"No you won't. You love me," Sam smirked.

Gabriel stared, speechless for a moment, because he certainly hadn't expected Sam to say that so casually, so soon. "Yeah. I do," was all he was able to come back with.

"Well then, love, I suppose we should have dinner tonight. Obviously, my soulmate likes Mexican food just as much as I do, so I'll pick you up from here after work and we'll go to this little place I know in the next street, sound good?"

Gabriel swallowed a few times to recover his voice, shaking. "Of course. But it'll still be pretty early by the time we're done eating. So, knowing that the love of my life likes the original series of Star Trek just as much as I do, we should probably head back to mine after and watch TV on the couch."

A slow smile spread over Sam's face. "That sounds wonderful. But the person I'll spend my life with is just as much of a cheesy romantic as I am, so I'm sure you won't mind when I stop the TV after a few episodes and put on some fifties music and ask you to dance with me."

Gabriel blushed and covered his mouth with his hand. "Yeah, I'll dance with you. But I don't do things by halves, and my boyfriend is someone who supports me in that, so I fully expect to be twirled around and dipped when the song ends."

Sam laughed. "Then I guess I better brush up on my moves this afternoon."

"If you want to impress a guy in the first date, then yeah, you should."

They held each other's gaze for a moment, and then Sam checked his watch. "Well, I should be heading back to work. Thankyou for the most eventful lunch break of my entire life, and I promise I'll be back to pick you up at the end of the day."

Gabriel nodded and crossed his fingers behind his back. If Sam didn't come back, he wasn't sure he'd get over that in a hurry, even though they didn't even know each other. But for some reason, he wasn't worried. He trusted Sam. And he knew he was going to spend the rest of the day imagining everything that might happen on their date, as well as many other milestones he saw in their future.

"Believe me, it was the most unexpected lunch break of my life too," Gabriel nodded. It blew that day with Kali almost eighteen years ago completely out of the water. This morning he'd been just another guy heading in for just another day at work, and he hadn't expected anything interesting to happen to him. Now... he felt like somebody else.

Sam headed back across the entryway and opened the door, but just as he was about to leave, he turned back to Gabriel. "Oh, I almost forgot. Knowing that my future husband always kisses on the first date, I gotta go pick up some chapstick before I go back to work."

With that, he strode out into the sunlight, letting the door swing closed behind him.

Gabriel rested his head against the cool glass and tried to recover himself. There was absolutely no way that had really happened.

He turned round. The box that had been bothering him so much for months was empty, the rose gone, the glass nothing more than sparkly dust on the floor. He'd done that. He'd broken it. And he hadn't been rejected.

He took a moment just to stare at the empty box, trying to calm his pounding heart, before he turned and went back to the stairs. He had a date to get ready for, after all.

Gabriel Novak started believing in love at first sight when he was twenty-five years, three months and eighteen days old. And he started believing all over again three years later, when Sam conspired with Castiel to re-install the box in the lobby one morning while Gabriel was at work. They organized it so that at lunchtime, Gabriel, his close friends, and everyone he worked with all gathered in the lobby. In front of everyone, Sam smashed the glass of the new box, knelt down and offered the item inside to Gabriel.

This time, the box didn't contain a rose. It held a ring.

**Author's Note:**

> talk to me at **casandsip.tumblr.com**


End file.
